Payroll employment, earnings and hours

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Non-farm payroll employment increased by 22,000 in December compared with the previous month. This represented the fourth consecutive month of modest gains.

Payroll employment has been on an upward trend since August 2009, in contrast to the previous 10 months when it had declined sharply. Despite recent gains, payroll employment remained down 380,000 from the peak in October 2008.

Job gains in December were spread across a number of goods and service industries. Overall, 61% of industries had some gains in the month, the highest share since October 2007. There were only two sectors in which the majority of industries had job declines in December: transportation and warehousing, and public administration.

Shifting trend in employment since August

Since August, a number of industries have increased payroll employment. The construction sector has increased by 19,300 (+2.4%) over this 4-month period. During the first 10 months of the economic downturn, it had shed 61,200 jobs.

Other industries with ties to construction have either had modest job growth or smaller declines in recent months, after large decreases from October 2008 to August 2009. These include building material and supplies dealers; household and institutional furniture and kitchen cabinet manufacturing; building material and supplies wholesaler-distributors; and architectural, engineering and related services.

Depository credit intermediation, which includes banks and credit unions, has also been on an upward trend in recent months, with average monthly gains of 2,500 jobs since August 2009.

Employment services, which include placement agencies, temporary services and human resource management services, have also increased since August 2009. From October 2008 to August 2009, payroll employment in this industry had declined sharply, but since then it has increased by an average of 500 jobs per month.

Employment up in health, public administration and education since October 2008

While many industries had overall job declines from October 2008 to December 2009, almost all industries within health care, public administration and educational services saw their payroll employment increase over the period.

From October 2008 to August 2009, health care employment grew by 2.3%; from August to December, it grew by 3.0%. While educational services was on a flat trend from October to August, it grew by 2.2% from August to December. Meanwhile, public administration grew by 2.7% over the first 10 months and by 0.8% over the past 4 months.

Within the health care sector, one example of this upward trend over the 14-month period is the ambulatory (out-patient) health care services sub-sector. This sub-sector, which employs over 400,000 people, consists of offices of health care practitioners; out-patient care centres; medical and diagnostic laboratories; home health care services; and other ambulatory care services such as ambulance and blood donor services.

From August to December 2009, ambulatory health care services grew by 2.2%, with the same or a higher rate of job growth as that of educational services (+2.2%); federal public administration (+1.3%); local, municipal and regional public administration (+0.3%); provincial and territorial public administration (-0.1%) and hospitals (-0.1%).

Slower declines in manufacturing since August

Since August, the pace of job losses in manufacturing has slowed considerably to 2,100 per month on average. However, between October 2008, when overall employment peaked, and August 2009, manufacturing had shed over 19,400 jobs a month on average.

Manufacturing industries that were still experiencing job losses, but at a much slower pace since August, include plastic products; architectural and structural metals; other wood product manufacturing; and sawmills and wood preservation.

At the same time, a few manufacturing industries that had shed jobs from October to August have seen recent gains, including motor vehicle parts; motor vehicle assembly; communications equipment manufacturing; veneer, plywood and engineered wood product manufacturing; and machine shops, turned product, and screw, nut and bolt manufacturing.

Fastest pace in year-over-year average weekly earnings growth since October 2008

Average weekly earnings, including overtime, of payroll employees rose to $837.08 in December, up 2.8% from December 2008. This was the fastest year-over-year growth in average weekly earnings since the peak in employment in October 2008.

Among Canada's largest industrial sectors, average weekly earnings increased between December 2008 and December 2009 in health care and social assistance (+5.6%); accommodation and food services (+4.8%); public administration (+3.8%); retail trade (+3.8%); educational services (+3.3%); and manufacturing (+2.7%).

Over the same period, average weekly earnings declined 0.7% in construction.

All provinces reported growth in average weekly earnings in December compared with December 2008. Newfoundland and Labrador (+5.6%) experienced the fastest growth, followed by Saskatchewan (+4.9%) and Ontario (+3.9%). Alberta (+1.2%) had the slowest year-over-year growth.

Comparing the Survey of Employment, Payrolls and Hours and the Labour Force Survey

The Survey of Employment, Payrolls and Hours is designed to provide wage information, as well as a detailed portrait of employees by industry at the national, provincial and territorial level.

The Labour Force Survey, the official source for the unemployment rate, provides a complete picture of the labour market, as it includes information on those employed (including self-employed), unemployed and not in the labour force.

While the monthly estimates from the two surveys may differ for conceptual and methodological reasons, the trends in the data are quite similar.

Available on CANSIM: tables 281-0023 to 281-0039 and 281-0041 to 281-0046.

Definitions, data sources and methods: survey number 2612.

Detailed industry data, data by size of enterprise based on employment, and other labour market indicators will be available soon in the monthly publication Employment, Earnings and Hours (72-002-X, free).

Data on payroll employment, earnings and hours for January will be released on March 31.

For more information, or to order data, contact Client Services (toll-free 1-866-873-8788; 613-951-4090; labour@statcan.gc.ca). To enquire about the revisions, concepts, methods or data quality of this release, contact Jason Gilmore (613-951-7118), Labour Statistics Division.